


to sail you home

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Angst, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Missing Persons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-10-18 20:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10624233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: Nancy has been gone for so long that Ned fears the worst.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at my Nancy Drew fic tumblr, nancydrewdiary.

Ned comes back when the leads have gone cold, once he has no money left and Andy needs him home.

He wants to stay, but with every day that passes he’s more and more afraid that what he finds won’t be his wife but her remains. He needs to believe she’s alive and safe but if she were alive, she'd  _come back to them,_ he knows that. If she were able.

Andy is ten years old, and when Ned walks, weary and heartbroken, to the baggage return, his parents and Carson and Andy are waiting for him, and Andy runs toward him. She’s getting so big, their daughter, their only child; she has Ned’s dark wavy hair, reddish where the light catches it, and Nancy’s inquisitive blue eyes, and she’s all long gangly limbs and curiosity and innocence. Ned holds her tight and kisses the crown of her head as she cries, in relief on seeing him again, in despair because her mother isn’t with him. He promised he would do all he could, and he did, and it wasn’t enough.

That night he and Andy return to their house, the air stale from their absence, the mailbox choked with junk mail. It’s been years since nightmares or fright have driven her to their bed, but that night Andy sleeps with her arms around her father and Ned wraps his arm around her and strokes her back, and he doesn’t sleep.

_Nancy. Baby, come home, please come home._

Carson calls all the people he can, pulling all the strings at his disposal, as Ned tries to figure out what to do. He can’t leave his life behind, because Andy’s a part of it; she needs her father, needs someone to provide for her and keep her safe, and Ned spent so much on tickets and hotel rooms that he’s broke. It all would have been worth it, if she had been at the end of it; he would have given everything to send Nancy home to their daughter.

Ned even does the unthinkable, as much as it hurts. He turns all the leads he found over to Frank and Joe Hardy, and begs them to do whatever they can to find her, to find out what happened to her, to find the group or person responsible for her disappearance.

But all the clues they find lead nowhere, and Ned feels awful the morning of Andy’s eleventh birthday, knowing that she won’t have the present she wants most.

He can’t give up, though. Maybe the search is on hold for a little while, but he still clings to that last seed of faith. He will find her, or she will come home; Andy won’t grow up without a mother, the way Nancy herself did.

He’s almost saved enough money to go back and make a second attempt when Andy comes into the kitchen on the first day of her summer break. Instead of her usual baggy t-shirt and cotton shorts, though, she’s wearing jeans and sneakers and a fitted shirt with a hoodie over it, her long dark hair plaited and falling over one shoulder. Her blue eyes are determined, and she looks so like her mother that Ned feels it stab through his heart.

“Dad?”

“Hmm? Scrambled eggs?”

Andy nods, brushing a few tendrils of loose hair from her brow. She’s thirteen, entering high school in a few months; she’s studious and dedicated, and Ned couldn’t be more proud of her. His mother and Hannah have stepped in to help where they can, but when she had her first period one Saturday, Ned was the one who went to the store to buy her pads and told her she wasn’t going to die. Ned listened when she talked about her crushes, when she swore she would never be a spy like her mother, when she admitted that she was thinking about changing her mind.

“Dad? Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Ned puts the plate of eggs in front of her, pours a glass of orange juice before he takes a seat at their small kitchen table. “What’s up, honey?”

“I know you’re going back. And I want to go with you this time.”

For a moment Ned’s heart is in his throat. “Andrea…”

“I talked to Grandpa. He says he’ll buy the ticket for me. Kind of like a graduation present.” She hasn’t even touched her fork; her blue eyes are steady and determined. “And I know if I ask him he’ll give me some extra money to cover meals and things. I’ll help you. I won’t keep you back.  _Please,_ Dad.”

“It’s too dangerous, baby. It is. The people I might have to talk to, the places…”

She keeps her gaze locked to his face, and her jaw tightens. She’s always had her mother’s stubborn streak. “Then I’ll go without you,” she says, her voice quieter but still firm. “You know I will.”

Ned’s hand tightens into a fist, and a flush rises in his cheeks. “I can’t lose you,” he tells her. “Not both of you. You’re all I have left of her…”

“And we’ll find her. Together.” The expression on her face is nakedly eager and pleading. “Because when you were gone before, every night when I went to sleep I was so afraid I would never see you again…”

He comes around the table then and wraps her in a hard hug, and she returns it, her face pressed against his chest. “It won’t be easy,” he finally says as he strokes her hair, and he knows she isn’t bluffing, that if he leaves without her she’ll find a way to follow. “It’ll be one of the hardest things you ever do, Andy.”

She tips her head back and her eyes are shining when she looks at him again. “But it’ll be worth it,” she murmurs. “When we bring her home.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s been three years since Nancy’s disappearance.

Ned dreams of her. He dreams of her almost every night, and what drives him crazy is that she’s home and safe with him and Andy and everything seems normal until he wakes. Some nights the separation between them is clear—a fire, a faceless figure dragging her away—but some nights it’s like she never left.

He knows that if she were dead, he would know it somehow. His own heart would stop with hers. He would mourn the loss of her. But it is becoming harder and harder to imagine her whole and safe in his arms, after three years, because if she were alive, _she would have come home._ And she hasn’t.

He doesn’t want to take Andy; he wants to leave her safe at his parents’ house and come back to her at the end of the summer, without worrying about her. But Andy is very much like her mother, and if Ned is going to find his wife, maybe she’s the way he will.

They check into an inn that isn’t too expensive, and they begin at the last place he knows she was. The call comes four hours after they check in.

“Ned? I’m sorry. I’ve just had some news.” Frank lets out a long sigh. “There were some remains…”

Ned’s stomach sinks to the floor. He glances over at his daughter; she is studying a map of the area, chewing on a pen cap. “When? What…”

“I only found out an hour ago. I’m so sorry.”

Ned hangs up once Frank promises to send him details. He sits down on the bed on his side of the room, and he can’t do it. He can’t say it to Andy. Not yet. He can’t take the last of her hope away.

But she looks up at him and her eyes are shining. He ignores his phone when he hears the email notification. “When she was here,” Andy says, and her voice is shaking a little, “she would have gone to the cafe to meet up with her contact…”

“Yeah,” Ned confirms, and he touches his wedding band with his fingers.

“So let’s go.”

It would be closure, Ned supposes. To retrace her last steps and say their goodbyes, to take Nancy home and bury her beside her own mother. It just doesn’t feel that way.

The next day they take the train and Andy’s gaze is down, her hand in his. He can feel that she’s breaking apart inside, holding out the barest hope that the remains won’t be her mother’s, that there will be some sign. But it’s been three years. He doesn’t even know how much is left.

The person in charge of the remains makes them sign before they’re allowed in to see, and casts a judgemental glance at Andy, clearly warning Ned that the sight is inappropriate for her. But this is Nancy they’re talking about, Andy’s mother, and she needs this, no matter how much it might hurt.

He is unsurprised to see the bones laid out on the shining table; he is surprised by how it floors him, like a punch straight in the gut. He doesn’t want it to be true. To see the spine he stroked while she groaned with contraction pains, the butterfly span of her pelvic bone, the secret heart of who she once was. Andy takes it in with brimming eyes and a pained gasp; she buries her face against his chest and he feels her shake.

He holds her all the way back, with her head resting against his chest. He holds her until she sleeps, but he can’t.

It’s at three o'clock in the morning that he realizes why. The skeleton bore a healed fracture on the right forearm.

He was there for most of Nancy’s x-rays. It was conceivable that she could have had such an injury before they had met, since she certainly hadn’t fractured her arm while they were together—but he would have seen it during the scans.

A wave of cold washes over him.

She’s still out there. And someone wants to make sure he stops looking.

Andy is subdued the next morning, and they go back to the same cafe. Once they’re seated inside, Andy props her chin on her hands, and Ned’s heart constricts in pain. He could be wrong, but he doesn’t think he is—and he doesn’t know how to tell her, their child, who looks so like Nancy that he can’t help wanting to protect her.

_She’s alive,_ Andy mouthes as she unwraps her silverware.

His first impulse is to glance around, to see why she is being so secretive—but it makes sense. Someone has them under surveillance; the timing is too perfect. The decoy wasn’t necessary until he took this step. His mind is already spinning, thinking of excuses for staying longer: taking Andy on a celebratory trip, letting her see Europe, something, _anything._

Across the street from the cafe after their meal, he sees something he missed the day before: a mailbox store. Nancy told him a few times during her training that it was convenient, a good way to leave a message that would be too hard to send out of the country.

He takes Andy into the store with him, and a tired-looking clerk glances up from a puzzle book as the bell jingles against the door frame. “Hello,” Ned says with a smile, trying English first. “I’m here to pick up mail for Irina Andronova.”

Her code name, she told him a long time ago, couldn’t be a play on her own name or his, or of any in their family. It had to be entirely different from everything else. Untraceable. Even so, it’s been three years, and he wonders if any message has been tossed aside, sent elsewhere.

The clerk shuffles away and returns with a postcard. Nancy tried to disguise her handwriting, but he recognizes it anyway—and then he wonders if he’s just trying too hard, if it’s a trick.

_Please, if you love me, take her home and be safe. Don’t try to find me. Please._

The postmark is from two days earlier.


End file.
